An Expert Reveals the Secrets of Cottage Maintenance

Whether you call your place a cottage, a camp or a country home, the technical challenges of keeping the property up remain more or less the same. Here are some tips to get cottage season off to a good start.

Black Pipe Essentials

Without black polyethylene pipe, cottagers everywhere would be hauling water with buckets. It’s the workhorse of backwoods plumbing systems because it’s inexpensive and tough. But there are also several important tricks for making tight connections with black poly pipe.

Simply slipping black poly over matched fittings and then tightening down a screw clamp isn’t reliable. The connection will almost certainly leak. The key to water tight connections is heat.

Slide two loose screw clamps over your pipe.

Warm it gently with a propane torch.

Then slip the poly over the fitting and torque down the clamps with a socket wrench while things are still warm. You’ll get water tight results, once and for all.

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